Rollo May is considered the grandfather of the Existential School of counseling and psychotherapy, which builds upon the classic psychoanalytic movement – a movement he both appreciated and critiqued. He was born in 1909 in Ohio and died in 1994 in northern California. May studied at Oberlin College and served as a high school teacher in Greece for a few years before attending Union Theological Seminary. After graduating from Union, he practiced for 2 years as an ordained minister at the First Congregational Church in Verona, New Jersey, after which he dedicated himself to doctoral studies at Columbia University where he earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology.
Rollo May was a good friend of the Christian theologian and mystic Paul Tillich, whom May met in 1933 while he was a student at Union. Tillich was also a strong intellectual mentor for May. Later in his life May wrote a memoir of their friendship that was published shortly after Tillich’s death.
The foundations of his approach...
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Bibliography
May, R. (1969). Love and will. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
May, R. (1975). The courage to create. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
May, R. (1983). The discovery of being: Writings in existential psychology. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
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Baard, R. (2020). May, Rollo. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24348-7_9189
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